enterprise project management

Integrating Primavera and Oracle Projects

EPM, also known as Enterprise Project/Programme/Portfolio Management, is the subject of many articles, conference talks, product brochures and conversations in corporate corridors. Having read, attended and been involved in many of these, EPM often boils down to answering these two most frequent questions: How much will it cost? and When will it be done?

Despite the plethora of so-called EPM systems available to us, there are none we know of that can answer both these questions without being integrated with another system. This article is concerned with two of these systems: Primavera P6 and Oracle Projects.

Kinley Toolkit Improves Deltek Cobra Integration with Primavera P6

Deltek Cobra is a leading Earned Value Management (EVM) application that can integrate with scheduling tools including Oracle Primavera P6. Deltek Cobra has an Integration Wizard to do this that can be ran unattended if necessary lending itself to being part of an automated workflow.

When working with Primavera P6, the Deltek Cobra Integration Wizard provides a lot of functionality:

On paper the capabilities look really good, and they mostly are, but there are some challenges that mean configuring Deltek Cobra to work with Primavera P6 will usually require some compromises.

Custom Training for Enterprise Project Management

Many enterprise tool vendors offer training in their products that are a generic ‘one size fits all’ tool focused approach. By focusing only on tool training, this approach often ignores what it takes to make an implementation successful. While this can help some team members at the individual level, more too often it doesn’t help the enterprise achieve their goal to successfully implement enterprise project management.

Mentoring and Coaching for Enterprise Project Management

Many implementation approaches to Enterprise Project Management focus on installing, configuring, piloting and rolling out software while including end user training. While this approach seems to make a lot of sense, it is not uncommon for implementations to falter, or worse, fail.

Implementing a Programme Management Office (PMO)

All companies are facing an increasingly faster and faster world. We are challenged with more aggressive deadlines and with fewer resources available to deliver to the higher quality measures. In short, we’re all under intense pressure to deliver better results, faster.

Implementing Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS)

Many organisations today are looking to implement an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) and, for the majority of these companies, it is their first time. Kinley Consulting has extensive experience in implementing Earned Value Management Systems across a variety of industries. Other consulting organisations that ‘specialise’ in implementing EVMS often deploy a one size fits all approach, which for many, leaves an over engineered and unwieldy solution.

Primavera and Financial Systems

Both Primavera and the Financial Systems need each other in a projects based organisation. Primavera aims to support the needs of the Project Management community, whereas Financial Systems go to the heart of the Financial Accounting community. Confusion often occurs as there is some overlap in functionality between Primavera and Accounting software, and the two worlds often use the same words to mean different things. However, they are complimentary and organisations fair better utilising the strengths of each:

Primavera Systems Integration

Our experience has shown that with implementations of enterprise project management tools, integration with other systems is inevitable. One of the capabilities that Kinley’s technical services team provide, is systems integration. Examples of our work include:

Network Rail Chooses Kinley Consulting To Augment Team

Kinley Consulting has again been selected to augment the Network Rail team by providing project management and planning expertise to several key programmes. Kinley brings both the experience in managing mission critical programmes for major organizations as well as in depth technical expertise in Primavera’s enterprise tool suite.

Primavera Staff Augmentation

In addition to delivering high value management, business and Primavera implementation consulting, Kinley has provided all of its major clients with Primavera experts to help in the ongoing smooth operation of the tool suite. With a wide range of industry experience, Kinley can help improve project delivery while reducing the risk of staff ramp up and transition.